LUTHER BURBANK 



seemed always to know where anything that was 

 wanted could be found, and better still, she was 

 usually able to find it. She was in the truest sense 

 a helpmate to her husband in all respects. Being 

 of mature years when she married, she bore only 

 five children, and she outlived my father by many 

 years, reaching the age of ninety-six years, and 

 passing her declining days in my home at Santa 

 Rosa, active to the very last and keenly alive to all 

 that was going on around her. 



As to aspects of remoter heredity, I have never 

 very greatly concerned myself. It is said, how- 

 ever, that one branch of the family on my father's 

 side was probably Belgian-Dutch far back in the 

 fifteenth century, this stock supplying the first 

 authentic trace of our ancestral line. 



We next hear of the Burbanks in the North of 

 England, from which place five Burbank brothers 

 emigrated to America. 



We find by Custom House records that Joseph 

 Burbank came in the ship Abigail from London in 

 1635, and that John Burbank, from whom our 

 family descended, was made a voter at Rowley, 

 Massachusetts, in 1640. My father's mother was 

 Ruth Felch, originally from Wales. My mother's 

 family, the Rosses, came from Scotland. Her 

 mother's name was Burpee, and her family was 

 said to be of French descent. 



[16] 



